


Operation Christmas Cookie

by Seascribe



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Fluff, Food, Holidays, Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:02:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seascribe/pseuds/Seascribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus loves holiday sweets.  Cottia and Esca love feeding him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Operation Christmas Cookie

**Author's Note:**

> For Riventhorn's Tis the Season commentfest.

Every Christmas, Marcus tries to institute a policy that bans excessive baked goods in the flat right up until December 24th. Every year, he fails spectacularly.  
  
"There's no reason to have a different kind of Christmas cookie for every day of the month!" he insists. "It's ridiculous. Why can't we celebrate by going caroling or sledding or--or watching  _Love Actually_ instead?"  
  
"I am  _not_  watching  _Love Actually_ every day until Christmas," Cottia says. Which is unfair. Even Marcus doesn't love the movie that much. Every other day, tops.  
  
"What about pie?" Esca wants to know. "Different pie for every day of the month? Nice change, bit of a challenge."   
  
"Absolutely not," says Marcus and goes to look up how much a seasonal gym membership will run him.   
  
*  
  
Marcus comes home from work and finds Cottia in the kitchen, singing Bing Crosby songs off-key and melting Ghiradelli in the make-shift double boiler while Esca crushes packets of Oreos with a rolling pin and an air of demented glee.  
  
"S'not baked goods," Esca points out cheerfully. "Haven't turned the oven on all day."   
  
Marcus swears to himself he's not going to touch them. It's a slippery slope; one Oreo truffle isn't so bad, or even two, but the third, fourth, and fifth ones are the ones that will get you. And after you've fallen that low, then it doesn't seem like a big deal to have a slice of banoffee pie for breakfast or a handful of those little powdery nut cookies that Cottia makes or a few chunks of peppermint bark. Esca and Cottia can get away with that kind of thing, but not him.   
  
He's doing so well. This year is going to be different. Cottia puts the truffles out on the table during dinner, and he doesn't touch them, not even when Esca grabs one and eats it in slow, sensuous bites, making noises like some kind of pornstar. It's when he's curled up on the couch watching  _Scrooge_ , with a mug of tea and his feet jammed under Esca's legs to keep warm, that he makes the mistake of letting his guard down. As though she has been waiting for it, Cottia squeezes in beside him and presses one of the truffles against his mouth. It's gone before he can even think about it.  
  
"Cottia!"   
  
"Oh, come on, Marcus, it's Christmas. Live a little." On the other end of the couch, Esca is making absolutely no effort to hide his amusement.   
  
"Eat my way to a heart attack by forty, more like," Marcus grumbles. When Esca gets up to make more tea, he brings back a little plate of truffles too, making a show of licking every particle of chocolate off of his fingers until Marcus elbows him and steals a handful, sealing his fate. 

Marcus gets up early to go biking the next day, to work off the truffles and attack the rest of the month with a clean slate, but when he comes back, clammy-cold with sweat and giddy from exertion, the kitchen is bursting with the smell of homemade cranberry-creamcheese danishes, fresh out of the oven. There's a note next to them, in Cottia's spidery handwriting:  _Surprise in the shower for you before breakfast, overachiever._  Down the hall, Marcus can hear the water running and Esca's bark of laughter. 

Cottia grins around the curtain at him when he opens the door. "Hurry up and get in before the hot water goes!"

It stays warm long enough for him to scrub himself clean, and for Esca to go down on his knees to suck him off, but Marcus says, "I'm going to fall down if you do." It's the endorphins, and his damn leg; he's barely staying upright as it is. 

"Shouldn't have ridden so far," Esca says a few minutes later, kneeling on the bed and digging his fingers into the quivering muscles. Cottia runs her thumb along Marcus' cock, smearing pre-come onto his belly.

"Had to work off those damn truffles, didn't I?" Marcus gasps. "Ah fuck, Cottia--"

Cottia grins down at him. "Patience. Esca, are you nearly done?" In answer, Esca plants a wet, open-mouthed kiss on the tip of Marcus' cock. Cottia rolls off of the bed, and comes back with the jar of Nutella she'd put out to eat with breakfast. 

She smears a bit of it across Marcus' lips with her thumb, while Esca does obscene things with his tongue, making Marcus' toes curl. 

"I  _hate_ you," Marcus groans, nipping at the pad of her thumb. "So--so much." 

"You love me." Cottia leans down to kiss him, all hazelnut and chocolate, and Esca hums around his cock. Marcus comes so hard he sees stars. 

"So," Cottia says, when he opens his eyes, dimpling at him. "Who wants breakfast?" Marcus eats three danishes, and swears he'll work them off that afternoon. Esca grins, and offers to go buy more lube.

Marcus gives up for good on the day that Cottia mixes up an enormous batch of gingerbread dough. His resolve is already worn thin after two weeks of malteser biscuits, snickerdoodles, three different kinds of pies, and what Cottia has dubbed "Operation Christmas Cookie," which is, as far as Marcus can tell, their Christmas mission to put him into a diabetic coma. 

"It's cute how much you like sweets," is how Esca had explained the Operation. "Like a little kid. But less cute when you angst about it. So it's like an intervention; you can't feel bad about it if we've set you up, can you?" This logic seemed a little specious to Marcus, but he was a glass or two of wine beyond being able to point out why, and he suspected that Esca was a glass or two beyond listening anyway.  
  
Even without the Operation, though, the gingerbread would've been the last straw. It's been Marcus' very favourite Christmas sweet since he was little. Resistance is futile.   
  
"Okay, we're going to have a competition!" Cottia announces, pouring them all a healthy measure of eggnog. "Whoever makes the best cut-outs wins."  
  
"Wins what?" Esca wants to know, and Cottia swats him with a potholder. Marcus isn't dumb enough to ask what criteria "best" is going to be judged on.  
  
"Wins the competition," Cottia says primly, taking a swig of her eggnog.   
  
Esca starts cutting right away, making all sorts of things without any discernible theme: a star, a unicorn, something that he assures Marcus is supposed to be a Dalek. Cottia is more organised, cutting out a series of differently sized circles and using glasses to make rings to go around them.   
  
"It's the solar system," she explains, adding a few little stars for good measure.   
  
"You've one planet too many," Marcus says, pointing to the little one out on the end.   
  
"Pluto will  _always_  be a planet to me," Cottia says, smacking his hand away.   
  
Esca has moved on to making gingerbread men and women in rude positions by the time Marcus comes up with a theme for his cut-outs. He uses most of his dough to make an enormous castle, complete with turrets and the silhouette of a half-lowered drawbridge. For the rest, he makes a tiny knight in on horseback with a lance, and a rather lumpy dragon breathing what is supposed to be fire. He doesn't have enough left to make a princess, so he cuts her silhouette into one of the castle's windows instead.   
  
He finishes just as Esca's Kama Sutra cutouts and Cottia's planets have come out of the oven. Pluto is a little burnt, but otherwise they look quite nice. She adds food colouring to the icing to make the planets, and puts little sugar crystals on the stars to make them look twinkly.   
  
Esca bites off the head and torso of one little gingerbread man giving it up the arse to another, and Cottia says, "Disqualified," trying not to laugh. Esca shrugs and eats the other little man without comment.  
  
The princess' head has kind of expanded and fused to the rest of the castle during baking, but otherwise, Marcus thinks his little tableau looks pretty good. He steals a little of the icing left over from making Mars to colour the dragon's flame, but decides he can't be arsed to do any other detailing.   
  
"Call it a tie?" Cottia says, taking a bite out of one of her sugar-sprinkled stars.  
  
"Sure," Marcus laughs, and snags the thing that is supposed to a Dalek off of Esca's tray.   
  
In the den, Esca yells, "Cottia, where've you hidden the _Love Actually_ DVD?"   
  
"Somewhere that you'll never find it!" Cottia yells back.   
  
"Five quid says it's in with the cleaning supplies under the sink," Marcus says, grabbing the eggnog and Esca's cookie tray to settle in on the couch.   
  
"My eggnog needs more rum in it, if you're going to make me watch this again," Cottia says, snuggling up with Marcus under his blanket and stealing one of the pornographic little gingerbread couples.  
  
Esca plonks a bottle of Bacardi onto the coffee table and goes to put the DVD in, pressing play. "There you go, and there you go. Oh no, hang on, pause, I want the castle." He comes back with Marcus' cookie tray, gnawing on one of the turrets. He offers Marcus the other and presses play. Marcus steals sips of Cottia's eggnog flavoured rum and helps Esca devour the castle and doesn't feel even the slightest bit guilty about any of it. After all, it is Christmas. 


End file.
